Akther, who was born in Pakistan, moved to Manchester as a youngster. She began designing clothes as a teenager, also creating painted textiles and decorating her brothers and sisters’ bedroom walls with hand-printed wallpaper.

“I didn’t stop painting,” she said, “I even decorated cupboards and drawers and bedding with matching curtains.”

Akther has recently begun to take her artistic ambitions more seriously, exhibiting her distinctive, textured paintings, whose subjects range from flowers to more abstract images, at a number of Manchester venues. 

“As my children have got older, I have had more time to devote to painting,” she explained. “What I want to do is to convey the beauty of natural objects in a tactile way, so that people can touch my paintings and, hopefully, feel what I feel about them.”

Paintings by Akther Bano will be on show at Sheringham Little Theatre until March 14th 2011.

For more information, visit www.northnorfolkartspace.co.uk